Tesseract Timelines
by SoManyStars
Summary: (SPOILERS FOR ENDGAME) Thor had been living with the Asgardians of the Galaxy for months now, and things were finally back to normal—that is, until he found a certain little brother in possession of a certain blue stone. Suddenly, Thor wasn't so sure what normal was anymore. OR—2012 Loki somehow makes his way back to Thor.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: I don't own anything Marvel or Avengers, unfortunately. Just my own thoughts.**  
Thor cocked his blaster and hooked it on his belt, surveying the rusty landscape. He had been forced to leave Stormbreaker aboard the Benetar—something about "not intimidating the local populace"—and, okay, Thor guessed he could see where that was coming from, but the spacesuit was just pointless. The Rabbit had insisted that _everyone_ took a spacesuit with them before they left the Benetar and had slapped one on his back, even though Thor didn't need the light covering. The Agullo atmosphere was easy enough for his time-hardened body to withstand.

But Thor had just shrugged internally. Blasters and spacesuits were a few of the many things he was beginning to get used to with the Guardians—and, in truth, he would take them over death and destruction and that beating _loneliness_ any day.

Hell, he was even willing—_maybe_—to let Starman be captain if it would distract him from his mind.

Though, fortunately, his newfound friends' strange adventures usually left little room for wallowing in memories. Thor had long ago stopped craving the bloodshed and violence that came with battles, but the initial adrenaline of running, of defending, of just being side by side with his companions was always exhilarating. Sometimes, it made him think of Sif and the Warriors Three and Loki (and, if it was late and quiet, and all he could see was the black emptiness of space, he'd slip away into nothing and surround himself with bottles until he was too blurry to remember—), but, usually, the fighting did a pretty satisfactory job of filling his mind.

Actually, Thor had to admit that things were decisively better after joining the Guardians. The stock of drinks that he had originally brought on to the ship had recently been used more for impromptu celebrations after heists than for his own personal use; in fact, he hadn't touched it for weeks. He was also getting the distinct impression that Rabbit was trying to get him to stop drinking—judging by how many times Tree had 'accidentally' broken one of his beers, or a bottle had mysteriously gone missing from the shelf—but Thor had only grown annoyed and argued with him once or twice.

Really, Thor was just grateful—touched, even—that he cared. That they _all_ cared—even the blue robot girl, Nebula, who sometimes talked with him about her lost sister, the one he had met years ago called Gamora.

Thor ducked underneath a dusty tent overhang, hovering on the edges of a market square peppered with merchants. They had stopped on Ahl-Agullo as more of a pit stop than anything else. Quill had heard rumors of Agullo pirates who might have information about Gamora, and the rest of his teammates had agreed to visit with little persuasion. He'd grabbed his blasters from the cockpit and set off across the planet almost the moment they had landed, with Nebula grumbling something about being there in case their subjects got "uncooperative" and reluctantly tagging along. The Rabbit, too, had disappeared fairly quickly, rushing towards a marketplace with Tree to steal some kind of transistors, and Drax had wandered off with the bug-girl, Mantis.

That left him, weaving his way through this small town, really, just to stretch his legs. With all of the quests and battles, he had been gradually growing back into his old physique and skill set; Rabbit had even transitioned from calling him ice cream to "more like hot fudge." ("Hey, he's starting to look better than you again, Quill!" he had cackled, and Quill had chucked his sandwich at him.)

But, sometimes Thor just preferred to walk rather than run or fight for his life. Technology glittered like jewels on racks and shelves around him, seeming feverishly bright through thick orange clouds of dust, and foreign alien tongues reached his ears, muted and murmuring. Each new civilization he visited with the Guardians was fascinating, and so starkly different from anything that he had ever experienced in the Realms that it made him marvel at how much there was out there.

How much had been at risk. How much they had saved.

The Agullo people had only just recently built back up to their previous economic heights after being devastated by...by _him,_ and Thor could still see the scars of it everywhere—in the way the children huddled close to their mothers, in how the merchants kept a wary eye on those who passed by as if expecting them to steal. And then there was the square itself: tattered around the edges, with faint scarlet stains worked permanently into the dirt like bruises.

He tore his eyes from the ground. Clearing his mind, he lazily meandered his way toward a shop full of little green cells—hadn't Rabbit asked him to pick up some common batteries or something?

Probably. He had no idea what "common batteries" looked like, but these seemed good enough. And next to them stood a shelf of some kind of whiskey, so maybe if Thor bought some of that, too, Rabbit wouldn't notice.

Picking up one of the bottles, he felt the owner's gaze boring into him and glanced up to meet it. "Ah, hello. How much is one of these?" he asked lightly. The merchant's narrow stare didn't abide.

Thor gave him a little smile.

The owner just grunted and pushed a small cup toward him, apparently meant for money. Thor casually wiped dust from the whiskey's label in an attempt to see the price, only to have it billow up in his face. He coughed, grimacing, ears ringing as he—

Then something cut through his hacking: a voice, terrifyingly clear and distinct.

He hesitated. Froze, at the faint, dulcet tones of Loki's—_his brother's_—voice.

Of course, it wasn't that rare of an occurrence for him to hear their voices—Mother, Father, Heimdall, Loki. They were always there, sometimes whispering and laughing, sometimes screaming so loud and abrasive he wished he could join them, if only to make it stop. Ghosts, that, even through their death (_because_ of their death), haunted the back of his mind, present in everything he did, everything he saw.

_Ghosts, illusions—_

He sighed and ignored the way his heart plummeted to his stomach. It wasn't him, it never was, and it hadn't been for five years, no matter how twisted a trick his heart played on him.

No matter how much that merchant's voice sounded like Loki's.

He wasn't going to check, or listen to it anymore, because he knew if he did, the disappointment and darkness would pull him under and take hold for weeks, dragging in its prey.

Instead, he curled his fingers too tightly around the bottle of whiskey and stared at the unfamiliar script written on its label.

And stared.

And stared.

The merchant growled.

"Uh, right, sorry," he murmured hastily.

The voice was still _there_.

Thor raised his head up, and a flash of sneaky gold and green flickered at the edge of his vision.

_No, don't, not real, not there—_

He whipped his gaze around to squint after the colors and felt a surreal dullness settle into his limbs like cement. His knees were shaking, and the shop owner was glaring murderously at him, but Thor didn't care. He slammed the bottle down on the counter.

"Um, sorry, give—give me a second."

He shot away from the stand and wormed his way through pink-skinned bodies and shelves full of metal, with his mind on fire because the figure that he had seen, the hair, the hair had been _black_—

_Stop it, stop it, ghosts—_

Then he exploded into a different area of the square, and the only thing separating him from the green-caped figure—who was conversing with another merchant in a low, cunning voice, undoubtedly attempting to strike some sort of deal—was a flimsy little partition.

"...L-Loki?" Thor croaked. Hope expanded rapidly inside his rib cage, like a too-tight balloon with too-thin edges, and he knew it would soon, inevitably, burst and suck him back down into that vicious spiral, but he just _had_ _to_—

The figure's spine stiffened minutely, not unlike that Midgardian dog creature Thor had seen once before when it smelled something threatening, and unwanted. Then it swiveled to face him, and Thor found himself staring at a pale, angular face he'd know even if his other eye was sliced out.

_How—?_

His mind stopped, buffering, looping the image around and around with no result.

It couldn't be possible. How was it possible? That Loki was here, had been holed away on this planet for five long years, hiding after he had stood against the greatest foe they'd ever faced?

_I, Loki, Prince of Asgard—_

Thor's fingertips, slick and clammy with sweat, nearly failed him as he clambered around for the closest object—a mutilated little piece of weaponry—and hurled it with all his might. It clanked off Loki's forehead, solid and echoey and almost comical, before he could defend himself, and hit the ground with a hollow thud.

_I assure you, Brother—_

He was here. He was _here._

His brother said something he couldn't hear, and his eyes narrowed in irritation, which Thor only took as an invitation to stumble forward, tripping over the uneven ground like a foal with shaky newborn's legs. The hazy orange air swirled about him, creating an effect far too similar to that of alcohol-imbued fantasies, but Thor could feel that this was different—this time, his arms were actually, truly closed around those gold-clad shoulders, thin and freezing cold but _real_ beneath his grasp. A sob tore from his throat, and he tightened his grip at the sudden, paranoid fear that if he let go, he'd find himself holding nothing but a bruised, broken body amidst the screams of nightmares. As it was, his vice-grip was probably cutting off Loki's air supply—otherwise his brother _definitely_ would have complained by now—but Thor was too dizzy to care.

"_Brother,"_ he whispered hoarsely.

An aggravated series of grunts (Thor thought he caught the words "fool" and "oaf," but his ears were too clogged with that stupid dust to make sense of anything) escaped from between his arms before Loki, instead of responding, twisted like a snake in his hold, sharp and quick. Something silvery danced briefly in his hand before vanishing from view.

Then it pierced his side, and shocks of ice exploded through his veins.

Thor gasped and automatically jerked back. For a moment, alarm struck his heart—_What if he was wrong? Was it really Loki? An illusion? What if it was an illusion? Was he angry—?_

But then he remembered his brother's knack for knife tricks. In their childhood, Loki had often seemed to prefer stabbing him more than actually holding a conversation, poking and prodding because he knew it annoyed Thor to no end.

(_And then he stabbed me. We were eight at the time._)

Giddy relief—that at least _some_ things remained the same—clouded over Thor's foreboding, and he relaxed, albeit only slightly. He leaned back, one hand winding toward his bloody side, a comeback, fresh and eager, already prepared on his tongue. Finally, he saw his brother's face clearly through the gloom—

—and found no mischievous taunting or satisfaction waiting to welcome him.

Thor's unspoken words curled back around his tongue and halted in his throat.

Because, at first, his brother's pale eyes were almost—terrifyingly—unrecognizable, cold and cunning and laced with a tiny shadow of anger that made Thor's skin prickle uncomfortably. Certain shades of darkness he had nearly forgotten about stared back at him from his brother's emerald gaze, foreign, like ghosts.

_Ghosts, illusions—_

Thor squinted hard, but his head had started to spin like a spool of yarn, unraveling over and over as the string slipped through his fingers. The knife blade felt serrated and dense in his flesh.

The corner of Loki's mouth lilted, more mocking than sincere. "You keep forgetting, Thor. I'm not your brother," he said wryly, twisting the blade deeper.

"Wha—?" _Not his brother?_

But Loki had admitted, he had _said_, on the Statesman—

_Odinson—_

Because Loki hadn't denied their kinship for years.

Not since _that_ time, when all hell had broken loose upon Midgard, when his brother had had bitter madness eating away at the edges of his eyes, and his hair had been smoother and slightly longer, his armour a gaudy green and gold—

When he had looked, in fact, just as he did now.

_Impossible._

When Thor responded with nothing other than spluttering, Loki ripped the knife out of his side with finality. Thor became aware that he was now several steps away—conveniently out of arm's reach. "Well, as much as I love these little talks, I'm afraid I must be going," he sighed aloofly. He flashed Thor one of his brief, showy smiles, fingers twitching behind his back in a way that set off warning bells inside Thor's head.

"Wait, Loki—"

"Give my best to the Allfather."

His voice was light and haughty but his eyes hard on the last word, and it took Thor a long, sluggish moment—way too long—to realize that he had said _Allfather_. In the same instant, Loki's hand wrapped into a circle, and blue light solidified into one of the last things Thor wanted to see at that moment, resting innocently in his palm.

Adrenaline instinctively snapped through his blood, his shoulders tensing. How the hell was that stupid Cube back here? Hadn't the Captain taken it back? The storm of confusion in his mind pounded further.

Then, all at once, the edges of the air began to shiver and implode around Loki, creating a chasm of angry blue smoke that sent the common people of the square jerking backward, shrieking.

Panic seized Thor's heart like a cruel claw, he was losing Loki _again, _just like the Bifrost, just like Svartalfheim and Thanos, always his fault, his _failure—_

"No, no—!"

Stormbreaker slammed into his outstretched hand before he could remember summoning it, but the portal was _closing, _too late, too late, and his vision was going milky white and his thoughts frantic—

Light exploded from the axe and blasted Loki and the Tesseract ten feet apart.

Oh. Um.

...Oops?

He stood for a moment in the square, panting, trying to dull down the surges of electricity coursing through his body.

Around him, straggling groups of Agullo had seemingly appeared out of nowhere to form an uneven crowd, gawking at him in various degrees of fear, anger, and pure wonder. Thor suddenly noticed that Stormbreaker's shockwave had caused numerous stands and racks full of machinery to collapse, spewing their contents everywhere. The whiskey bottles he had been looking at earlier now lay in shards on the ground.

"Oh...ah, sorry about all...that." Trying, unsuccessfully, to loosen the tension in his chest and the confusion engulfing his mind, he offered the people his best sheepish smile, which probably looked quite pained. Several merchants were glaring daggers at him for ruining their stock, a couple bolder ones fingering at their weapons. "Er...family squabbles, you know?"

He was met with silence, but Thor decided that it would have to do. What else was he supposed to say, anyway? _Sorry, don't mind the explosions, just the god of thunder retrieving his slightly psychopathic brother who's probably from a different timeline._

Different timeline.

_Oh Norns, Norns, _Norns—

His gaze landed on the Tesseract, which was now lying on the dust like a fragile block of ice, flickering and humming with a seducing light. Catching Loki's greasy merchant friend eyeing it hungrily, Thor lunged forward and scooped the Cube out of reach of his prying fingers, ignoring the creature's angry squabbles of protest. It took every ounce of his godly willpower not to take the damn thing and _smash_ it to pieces right there, but he knew they would need it later for…uh...

Well, for something. He wasn't quite sure _what, _at the moment, he couldn't even think, but the last thing he wanted was for it to end up back in Loki's—or anyone else's—hands.

And, speaking of Loki...

His brother was out cold from the blow, twisted upon the soil, clothing still smoking slightly. By all scientific evidence, he was definitely real, and alive. (But it just didn't make any _sense—_) Now, up close, there was no doubt that it was him—and that he was very much _not_ the brother that had fought with Thor on the Statesman.

He stood and stared down at Loki—Midgard's attacker, his brother—for a long moment, several pairs of eyes still burning dully into his back.

_He's a lunatic, but he can be amenable, _Loki had once said of the Grandmaster, when they had been on Sakaar what felt like eons ago. It seemed almost cruel, now, for Thor to apply that same judgement back to him.

_So don't. He's not completely crazy, anyway._

But he was dangerous, and unpredictable, and leaving him here to scheme his way to the top promised destruction and chaos for the Agullo. Possibly even for the galaxy, the universe; with his brother, he never knew.

But what was he supposed to do with Loki, then? Haul him back, stuff him aboard the Benetar, and then what? Imprison him forever?

This Loki hated him, and it _hurt_. He hated Father, Asgard. Hated everything.

...How was this even _possible?_

He needed to do something.

Loki was alive. His _brother._

_(I'm here.)_

Thor gripped the Tesseract, leaned down, and hefted his brother over his shoulder like a sack of yaro root. _Betrayed by sentiment,_ Loki said, and it took a moment for Thor to realize that the voice was just in his head.

He sighed.

He was definitely going crazy.  
**Reviews are greatly appreciated! Thanks!**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Holy cow so that's WAY more reviews and follows and favorites than I ever thought I'd get with this story, thank you guys so much! I know this chapter is long overdue, mainly because I had to rewrite it so many times...**

**Anyways, I don't own Marvel or the Avengers, obviously.**

**Oh, and I guess warning for language, because it's the Guardians?**

**zaylo267: Of course he is, he's Thor. XD**

**KarliCM: Yeah I guess he can stay with Thor, but would he want to? Also there's the Thor back in his own timeline too...**

* * *

He met Rabbit and Tree at the Benetar far sooner than he had hoped to.

Not that he had thought about meeting them at all. As their silhouettes emerged, framing the dust, Thor suddenly realized that he hadn't even considered how he was going to explain his prisoner to the rest of the Guardians. He had spent most of his energy on the way back warding off an exceptionally large amount of hostility from the common people (apparently, Loki had a bit of a reputation on this planet, which wasn't the least bit surprising) and still comprehending what had happened. Now, though, it occurred to him that he had taken for granted that this Loki would even be allowed on the Benetar. He was technically still a villain (a _murderer?_). How was Thor supposed to prove him not a threat to his friends, when—and his stomach twisted at the thought—he didn't even know himself? And that wasn't even _considering_ the reactions he might get from the cursed blue Infinity Stone wedged in his armor, currently the only one in existence in this universe—

He worked at Stormbreaker's handle, fidgeting, as Rabbit's voice called out through the orange clouds.

"Jeez, what is _with_ all of this dust? I feel like a walking sand dune!" The Rabbit swiped his paw in front of his face, grumbling, and managed to do nothing but froth up the air even more. Slowly, he sauntered into view, with Tree bringing up the rear.

The Tree had a pout firmly set upon his face, limbs folded and noticeably free of his beloved video game. "I am _Groot_," he huffed, and Thor was begrudgingly impressed with the amount of profanity in those three words.

"Yeah, well you've got _bark_ for skin, of course you don't care!" Rabbit had his head down, one hand twirling his blaster and the other rummaging through his bag of stolen machine parts as he advanced. For a moment, Thor thought that maybe they hadn't noticed him yet (and he could—well, what would he even do? Run? Steal the Benetar?), before Rabbit raised his gaze and sobered his tone.

"Ignore him. One of the weirdos back there smashed his game and he's been moping about it ever since," the Rabbit explained, while Tree sulked with almost comically large eyes, the very picture of a scolded child. They both drew to a halt before Thor, and Rabbit holstered his gun with a certain finality.

"So, you got some batteries for me?" he questioned.

Well, there went the hope that Rabbit wouldn't notice. Thor grimaced at the mention of the batteries that had long escaped his mind, and replied, eloquently, "Um…"

However, Rabbit ignored his response, or just didn't care enough to comment on it. Either way, he didn't press the subject—because, predictably, his eyes had now landed on the person draped over Thor's shoulder like a limp green snakeskin.

"You got me a person, too? Well, that's a bit much, but—"

"It's my brother," Thor blurted out. For a moment—in spite of everything—he simply relished how good, how finally familiar the thought felt on his tongue.

Rabbit crossed his arms. "Wait, the dead brother?" he asked, tentatively, suspiciously. He pointed a claw at Thor's load. "_That's_ the dead brother?"

Thor winced, but nodded nonetheless. "...Sort of?"

The Rabbit snorted. "_Sort of? _What exactly is that supposed to mean?"

Ironically, Thor didn't even really know himself. But he took a breath anyway and tried to relay the events from earlier. "Well, I was walking through the marketplace and I heard his voice, so I went to go check and found...a different Loki than I knew, and he stabbed me and tried to leave, so I blasted him before he could get away—" he rattled off. "And I think he might be a Loki from another place or timeline or something, so I was going to tie him up once I got him inside."

_Brilliantly worded, Brother._

Thor pursed his lips and shifted his grip on Loki.

Rabbit blinked, and then shook his head. Tree had put his pouting temporarily on hold and was now staring at Loki with a renewed curiosity, like a baby watching a butterfly—though Loki was anything but a butterfly.

"...So you're kidnapping your fake-brother?" Rabbit concluded, raising an eyebrow dubiously.

"Ah...yes. To figure out how he's alive," Thor confirmed. _And because he's your brother, and you would've never been able to just leave him there._ _And because he's the only family you have left. And because he said the sun—_

He bit his lip, tasting grit and salt.

"Well, bring him in. It'll probably piss off Quill, but Quill gets pissed off with everything." Rabbit squashed a button on his belt, and a large steel entrance ramp detached itself from the belly of the Benetar. He smirked to no one in particular. "I'd say that's actually a benefit."

They began traipsing into the ship. Thor didn't realize until he was climbing in after them that he had completely neglected to mention the Tesseract.

* * *

Rabbit wasted no time in diving into the bowels of the ship, fishing out a questionable assortment of cables and wiring ("You _really_ don't want to know what this was from!") to use as makeshift ropes. Thor heaved Loki into a passenger seat and drew back to watch as Rabbit fastened his arms to the backrest. Tree slumped into a seat next to Loki's, trading between giving Rabbit morose looks and peering curiously at their captive.

Folding his arms from across the room, Thor found himself analyzing his brother—a habit that had probably been adopted from Loki himself, Thor thought wryly, or perhaps evolved from decades of his own increasing kingly responsibilities and warfare experience. His gaze fell on Loki's clothing, studying. It wasn't quite as extravagant as his attire had been for his world-conquering mindset—there was less gold, and the infamous horned helmet was nowhere to be found—but the background patchwork of green and black, finished by polished boots and long cape, were all there.

Daggers, probably, too, Thor suddenly realized. He hadn't thought to check Loki's armor for more weapons.

He started forward, the cube-shaped lump in his own armor (that he still had yet to reveal, but he'd get to that—) causing him to shuffle a little awkwardly. Reaching the chair, he rifled through the layers of fabric on Loki's figure—and found nothing, because his little brother had a nasty tendency to stash his weapons in thin air.

His brother's lolling head bounced back and forth as though taunting him.

_Do you truly trust me that little?_

Thor scowled, just a fraction. He had barely been able to trust his brother in the best of times, and now that he was like _this_—

He backed away again and tried to ground himself, back against the cool wall, but it didn't work. His head was swimming.

"What've you got there?" Rabbit's voice sounded across a landscape of empty bottles and food wrappers, like wind struggling over buildings. He stood in front of Loki's chair, but his eyes had finished carving him up like some new stolen ware and were now on Thor.

"Hmm?" Thor raised his eyebrows for a moment—and then remembered. The Tesseract was starting to beat white-hot from where it was hidden, soaking his bare chest with its own mini rays of sunlight. But every time Thor opened his mouth to tell his friends of its presence, that perfectly-edged opportunity seemed to slip away, and the words felt wrong on his tongue.

In truth, the majority of him _did_ want to take the Tesseract and simply hurl it off into space—where it was far, far away from him and those he cared about—but there was a voice in the furrows of his mind that said to keep it. Maybe it was the knowledge that the device in his possession could somehow, with some other magic, move through time, and move _people_ with it, too. That it could go back to where it all went wrong, and, in theory, snatch lives from their own dark timeline and out of Death's waiting hands—

He would just keep it, just in case. It couldn't hurt, could it—as long as they didn't activate the Cube itself?

"That thing. In your armor," Rabbit replied, crossing his arms and narrowing his gaze, and now Tree was looking at him too, apparently forgetting to pout. "You look like you're pregnant."

"No, nope, nothing. I've got nothing."

"I am Groot?" Tree piped up inquisitively, head tilted. _Pregnant?_

The Rabbit snorted. "Look, I know you went through your whole 'ice cream' phase, but you've obviously got something in your armor that ain't attached to you. I'm a thief, lightning fingers, I know when someone's hiding something."

The Cube was now threatening to burn a hole in Thor's heart, as if striving to inflict more damage than it already had, or perhaps trying to melt through his clothing and reveal itself.

He sighed, and decided, and braced himself.

"Alright, fine, it's...this."

Thor reached inside his armor and drew out the Tesseract on tingling fingertips.

Shock washed across Rabbit's face as if it was rainwater, while Tree merely blinked, watching. "That—that—is that the Tesser—Tesseran thingy? The _Infinity Stone_ that's supposed to be destroyed?" he blurted, advancing toward Thor, a spark in his voice.

Thor nodded, trying to ignore the similar images of Loki, holding out the Tesseract in this exact same position, delicate and seemingly desperate, that were like a river current running just underneath his.

_(You really are the worst, Brother.)_

"Tesseract. And yeah, it—it is," Thor admitted. "I...well, Loki had it when I found him. Somehow."

"_Somehow?_ That thing can't be here! It caused the fucking _apocalypse_, remember?"

Thor cringed—though at what part of the sentence, he couldn't tell. He licked his dry lips, trying to reason with Rabbit.

"I know, I get it, but I don't think this is the Tesseract that..._he_ destroyed"—a flash of violet blood gurgled up and spattered across his mind—"or the one that the Captain took back—I think it's another one, from a different timeline—"

"So? Then it needs to go back to that timeline, or we need to destroy it, or something! I am not going through all that freaky time bullcrap again—not for that _damn_ thing—"

"We can't destroy it though—not now, at least." He scooted the Tesseract ever so slightly out of Rabbit's reach, crouching down a little in what he hoped was a placating manner. "Listen, Rabbit, let's just keep it, ok, in case we need it, and later—"

Rabbit bit into his words with a scoff. "_Keep it? _It helped turn my family and half our friends into dust bunnies—courtesy of an angry purple bastard that we just now _finally_ beat—and you want to, what, put it in a cup holder?"

Thor had no idea what to say to that.

_...Yes?_

Behind Rabbit, Tree had turned back toward Loki again, chocolate gaze wide and glistening as if wondering what about this new magic hostage could incite such an argument. He leaned forward, studying the trickster, and then proceeded to swat the end of a branch in Loki's face.

Rabbit wheeled around without missing a beat. "Hey, hey! Don't flick the crazy magic dude in the face! You know better than that!"

Tree glanced up and fixed Rabbit with a pouting glare, still waving a tiny leaf at his new entertainment. "I am _Groot_." He jammed the twig defiantly up Loki's nose.

"You have got to be—"

Then Loki's eyes snapped open like twin rubber bands.

And all three of them _shrieked_.

Tree ended up halfway across the room, shoved behind Rabbit, and Thor jumped back so far that he upended a table and sent food and metal bolts skittering across the floor. The rattling echoes lingered for a long moment before settling into a waiting silence, three pairs of eyes coming to rest, hesitantly, on their prisoner.

In an instant, Loki's piercing emerald gaze had roamed his surroundings, flitting from the dimly lit card table, to the littered floor, to the single pie piece of orange atmosphere visible through the windshield, and finally back to his unruly captors. He didn't move, though—just sat, and watched, and assessed, in such a fashion that was so typically _Loki_ that Thor felt a dull warmth light in the pit of his stomach. His chest loosened with relief before he could stop it.

Rabbit, however, didn't hesitate to cock his blaster and aim it at Loki's forehead.

Thor leapt forward hastily and slapped his palm over the front of the gun, ignoring Rabbit's protests about 'being prepared.' "Ah, sorry, we're all just a little on edge," Thor cut him off. Behind him, Rabbit scoffed.

Loki opened his mouth, and Thor braced himself for more silvertongue barbs like their earlier encounter, but, surprisingly, none came. Loki seemed to have stopped himself momentarily as he scanned them—Thor, Rabbit, and finally Tree—up close. He gave no reaction, save for the slight crinkling of his eyebrows, but it was a look Thor had seen often enough—his brother's thoughts were no doubt working furiously behind that facade.

Then, after what felt like an eternity, Loki pinned him down with his gaze, and said, coolly, "You're not the Thor I know, are you?"

_You're not the Thor I know at all, are you?_

Thor's heart nearly choked him. The voice, those _words_, almost identical to the ones Mother had gently spoken to him not too long ago, with her scent of warm honey and home. Now, Loki's voice was hard and unbendable, steely as the bolts in his chair, but the connection was the same: Frigga had been raised by witches, Loki had been raised by Frigga. They had both been able to deduce a displacement in time.

Thor unglued his lips. "That...depends. Where are you from, Brother? What have you been doing?"

Loki merely gave a low, sardonic chuckle. "Oh, I _have_ missed this. The interrogation, the suspicion." He lifted his hands at the wrists, as far as he could. "Have you ever considered that I might be more inclined to give you the answers you seek if I weren't so crudely bound?"

"Yeah, funnily enough, _that _never works out well." Rabbit had pulled back his blaster from Thor's grip, but his arms were crossed rigidly across his chest, Tree still hovering behind him. It seemed that he had taken all of his dislike for the Tesseract and channeled it into an—admittedly not unwarranted—mistrust for its carrier.

Loki's gaze danced across to Rabbit and Tree, and then back to Thor. "Lovely choice of companionship. I'm sure Odin is pleased that his grand prince is passing his days traversing the galaxy with a horde of woodland creatures." He grinned dryly.

Rabbit jerked his head toward Loki. "Woodland? Who're you calling woodland?"

"I am Groot," Tree corrected stiffly. Guard _the galaxy, not traverse_.

Loki ignored them in favor of tilting his head at Thor. "Or has the Allfather finally decided to give up his little chase?"

_Allfather. _It punched Thor to the core, but the rest of the sentence pulled him on. "What? Father...Father didn't send me," he replied, baffled. The other words lay, discarded and aching, in his brain: _Father...is dead._

"Ah, so you so rudely interrupted my dealings of your own will. How predictable. I daresay it's becoming a habit—charging in, ruining my affairs with your mighty thunder," Loki quipped, rich silver sarcasm in full-tilt. Thor folded his arms, as though a barrier of bone and muscle would prevent the taunts from grating his nerves, or hitting his heart.

"Well, I don't care if I ruined your illegal deals, Loki. I stopped you because you had _this_"—Thor raised the Tesseract to eye level again, feeling as though his fingernails should be nothing but blackened crisps by now—"and because I need to know how you're—how you're here." _How you're alive_. The words from the past were starting to lodge like glue in his throat. He cleared it, fruitlessly.

Loki laughed sarcastically. "Yes, I missed you too."

"_How,_ Loki?" Thor repeated insistently. Every crafty word, every distraction was a moment wasted, and his spine was itching with impatience. "We won't keep you longer than necessary if you just—"

"Cooperate?" Loki deadpanned, his tone making the word more a statement than a question. He scrunched his brow in mock thought—sarcasm, again. "Have we done this before?"

Thor uncurled one fist—though he hadn't even remembered clenching it—and held it, fingers outstretched in the scratching air. Stormbreaker heeded his call with an electrifying swish and a satisfying _smack_ against his palm, instantly pulsing lightning through his skin in a way that was familiar, invigorating, and threatening all at once.

Loki only rolled his eyes at the theatrics.

Thor took a breath, relishing the comfort of his now-burning blood. "_Tell me,_ Brother. How,"—he gave the Cube a vigorous shake, when really he wished to grab Loki by the shoulders and rattle the answers out of him—"did you get this?"

Loki's eyes tracked its motion and then met his gaze stoically—silently—inches from him.

Then, suddenly, another question formed in Thor's mouth on a whim, bringing forth the tang of velvety flesh and blood, rushing up like bile. Before he could stop himself, he blurted, "Do you—do you know anything of the Statesman?"

He knew the answer, knew from the evidence sitting before him. He didn't know why he'd asked.

_(The sun—)_

Loki lifted an eyebrow. "I'm afraid not."

_A pointless inquiry, Brother. You know the truth. _

Now he had two Lokis invading his mind—the Loki sitting before him, and the ghost, the gone Loki. _His_ Loki.

He shifted his eyes off this Loki's, abruptly unwilling to continue staring at the green when it wasn't quite the same one that had told him he was _here._

...But at least Loki was alive in some aspect, right?

(He was living, breathing, in the very same room, after all.)

When Thor didn't respond, Rabbit looked at him carefully before jumping into the interrogation in his place. His eyes narrowed slightly at Loki. "What about Thanos? Big guy, kind of an asshole?" he asked.

Thor cringed automatically at the blunt name, as if some wretched instinct—and then loathed that he did so. He could feel Loki watching him—but, for once, Thor was watching his brother, too. He saw the word hit like a death sentence itself, turning Loki almost as ashy gray as the wall, though not a single muscle in his face twitched.

Loki smirked without humor—real or otherwise. "If you're searching for potential adversaries to heroically defeat, I suggest you do it elsewhere," he hummed.

"Don't do that, Loki," Thor countered immediately, words square and solid as bricks. _Lies, always lies, whether to himself or someone else or nothing at all. _"I _know_ you knew him—he sent you to attack Midgard—to get the Tesseract—and you failed him."

Loki's polished pretense didn't waver. "I answer to no one, _Brother_—not this Thanos, not your beloved Allfather. Chaos"—he grinned again, white teeth bare against the residual dust—"has no master."

"Then _how_ did you get the Tesseract?" Thor persisted, almost bulldozing over him. "Was it New York? Did you win that battle or something? Is that where you're from—2012?" If this Loki was truly from the past, Thor was fairly certain there must have been some sort of event or _something_ that allowed Loki to get ahold of the Tesseract.

...Right?

He gritted his teeth. Banner—who was, of course, currently hundreds of jump points away on Earth—was the one who understood time-travel and all of its strange quirks, not him.

"So many questions, Brother. Don't you remember?" His brother actually appeared—almost—genuinely confused. But, then again, it was probably just a mask.

"I—no, I don't. Just tell me."

"Now where's the fun in that?" Loki replied, aloof and unperturbed, toying with them like puppets.

Thor growled. It was almost a relief to feel the lightning taking over, channeling everything tangled inside him into one point. He jerked the axehead threateningly toward his brother's figure, its blade dense and sizzling with heat near Loki's chest.

_Answers, Loki, _answers.

The scorn in Loki's gaze went sour around the edges, like a faint stain marring his own crisp green clothing. His eyes flickered to the blade, and back. Taunting.

"Go on. Kill me."

—_Kill away—_

"Innocent, unarmed. See how _noble_ Asgard believes her king to be then."

He hated how Loki always played with Death. Turned it into a game, baiting the beast until it had finally had enough, until fate finally became too much.

Thor sighed, and even the air itself felt tired. "We're not going to kill you, Brother—"

Rabbit made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a groan. Loki looked vaguely intrigued at the prospect of debating his own death.

"—We're just going to talk."

His brother snorted.

Well, if Loki wouldn't give him a straight response, then there was no need for Thor to ask him questions. Instead, he forced himself to try and decipher the slightest tic, the smallest facial features like they were letters on blank paper, attempting to read Loki as Loki himself so often did to others.

"So that's it, then?" he concluded after a moment. "You're—you stole the Tesseract from 2012, and somehow ended up here."

Apparently, now his brother had wrung all of the fun out of dangling the answer over their heads. "I didn't truly steal it," Loki corrected. "Contrary to your father, I'm not a thief. The things _I_ sought were rightfully mine."

_Your father._ Thor simply asked, "What do you mean?"

"The Tesseract was meant to be in hands that could control it, Brother, hands that understood the full depth of its power. Not your mortal companions who insist that everything they lay eyes upon is their own."

"Are you saying the angry cube-thing _wanted_ to be with you?" Rabbit suddenly scoffed. "Somehow I doubt that."

Loki glared coldly at him.

Thor drew back, inspecting the unassuming Cube. It hummed idly, covered with little crystalline ocean waves that reminded him of those back on Asgard, frothy and innocent, inviting the children to dip a toe into their cool waters. He itched to pry Loki's gaze away from their blue glow.

Instead, he tore his own eyes away. "But the Tesseract was in a case, and you were in handcuffs," Thor interjected between Loki and Rabbit, remembering. "Did you move it with your mind or something?"

"No—that repulsive green beast knocked it free from its casing and right to my feet, so I left. No one was the wiser, not until I had vanished. Not even you." The contempt writ across Loki's face made it clear how ridiculously easy the escape had been.

"But that...that never happened," Thor mused. He didn't miss the way Loki's eyebrows bent together like drawn curtain strings at the words, but he brushed past it for the time being. This must be the event, then—somehow Loki had gotten the Tesseract before they had left Stark Tower in 2012, and disappeared.

And created some sort of alternate timeline?

"In the past, I eventually took you back to Asgard," he explained, and Loki wrinkled his nose slightly in that classic, childish disgust. "I remember...Banner took the stairs, got angry, but Stark had the case…"

"Unless he didn't," Rabbit's voice piped up from beside him. His nose was twitching thoughtfully, but his gaze was no longer locked on Loki like he found him as annoying as—well, as himself. He shrugged, and the little leather pouch on his hip jounced up and down as though agreeing. "Come on, we did a bunch of timey-wimey stuff, one of us was bound to screw up."

Thor nodded, feeling the pieces click together as he went back, cautiously, to that blurry time. "Stark, the small man, and the Captain all went back to 2012—"

" —and I guess they screwed up," Rabbit finished.

A morsel of silence settled into the air as they stood for a moment, digesting it all.

And then:

"...Freaky," Rabbit muttered.

Tree looked utterly baffled. "I am Groot?" _What now?_

Thor didn't get an opportunity to answer—not that he would have known what to say, anyhow. The walls of the Benetar had begun to shiver slightly, a mechanical buzzing now being ushered in by clouds of dusky orange air. The entrance ramp hit the ground, echoed barely a moment later by a single voice and an army of footsteps.

"Sorry gang, nothing on Gamora. Those pirates we heard about were a bunch of phonies." The disembodied voice heaved a sigh, sounding at their wits' end, and dropped into muttering. "Again."

Then Quill appeared in the doorway, sloughing off his spacesuit, face mask melting away, with Nebula, Drax, and Mantis crowding the hallway behind him. He halted at the threshold, and his eyes hit Loki.

"...Who the hell's that?"

* * *

**I feel like Loki would go and figure out he's in some different timeline and then just proceed to be annoying about it. Since he's technically got all the time in the world to do whatever the heck he wants. Also, maybe it's not all that realistic to think that Thor can hide an entire cube in his armor, but it wasn't like he could just put it in a pocket dimension like Loki, so I had to do something. :P  
****I'm simultaneously excited and terrified to try writing the rest of the Guardians next chapter, lol. The Loki interrogation continues.  
****Reviews welcome! Thanks!**


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